Iris Lam Chen ( San José, 22 September

1989 1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin W ...

) is a Chinese-Costa Rican arts manager and

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

known for her work in visual arts project management at the Cultural Center of Spain in

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

, y artistic strategy in Global Metro Art (GMA), organization in which she is director and founder. Her work emphasizes themes related to

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, the LGBTIQ+ community,

migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...

, strategy, the artistic market, and inter-institutional alliances between public, private, independent and academic entities.

Career and outstanding projects

Iris Lam is the cultural manager of the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica, where she coordinates all the projects and exhibitions of visual arts, music and experimental arts with technology, among which the International Artist Residency program stands out. Much of his work is focused on generating alliances and inter-institutional projects of a public-private, national and international nature, for example with the La Neomudéjar Museum (Spain)
MAV Biennial
(Spain), espacio/C (Guatemala), Quorum Cultural Laboratory (Panama), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (Costa Rica), La Revuelta (Guatemala)
Plataforma Caníbal
(Colombia), Ensayo y Error (El Salvador), Y.ES Contemporary, (El Salvador), Red de Arte del Centro de América (GUA), Building Bridges Art Exchange (USA), NYLAAT (USA), perfoREDmx (MEX), LL Proyectos (Honduras), National Gallery (Costa Rica), Cartago Municipal Museum (Costa Rica), Women's Museum (Costa Rica), Women Watching Women (Spain), among others. Since 2018, at the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica, she has coordinated the International Artists Residency project, which seeks to strengthen contemporary artistic creation and production, at the same time connecting and exchanging artists from different regions. Among the exchanges, she carries out residences with the La Neomudéjar Museum in Spain, Plataforma Caníbal in Colombia and with the Network of Cultural Centers of Spain in Central America and the Caribbean. She also manages the Creative Processes Experimentation Program that seeks to promote new alternative forms of research in various artistic disciplines, promoting an exchange of knowledge of cultural practices between

Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...

n regions. As part of this program, she leads the programming and curatorship of the exhibitions that are given annually both in the halls of the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica and those that are carried out internationally in alliance with other institutions, such as Reactivando Videografías together with the Royal Academy of Spain in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

, a

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. V ...

exhibition of which she is co-curator. In the same institution, she also seeks to facilitate the conditions to promote a critical approach to contemporary cultural practices, encouraging participation and generating a permanent dialogue between creators, cultural researchers and the diversity of audiences, through the Cultural Contemporary Practices Mediation Program. On the other hand, in her work at Global Metro Art, she is in charge of the management, consultancy, production and organization of independent and private cultural projects, in which her latest project stands out, the Human Suit Cultural Circuit, declared of national cultural interest in

. Related to this, she produced the Costa Rican participation in the artistic exchange program between

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

and the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

of the Ministry of Culture of China (2021), the Tijuana International Triennale of Pictoric Art in Mexico (2024), th
SACO Contemporary Art Biennial
in Chile (2021) at the Historic Pier of Antofagasta, at th
Camagüey International Video Art Festival
(2021) at the headquarters of the Circuit for the Exhibition and Development of New Media, the VII Festival of Latin American and Caribbean Art in China (2019) at the Beijing World Art Museum, the Artist-in-Residence for the 6th Season of Beijing Latin American Art (2019) at the Hanwei International Arts Center, and the Official Issue of Envelopes and Stamps

China Post China Post, officially the China Post Group Corporation, is the national postal service corporation of the China, People's Republic of China. It is incorporated as a state-owned enterprise. China Post shares its office with the sub-ministry- ...

70th Anniversary of the Republic of

(2019) and Beijing International Art Biennale (2017) commemorative at the National Art Museum of China. She has been a professor of Cultural Management at the

University of Costa Rica The University of Costa Rica (Spanish: ''Universidad de Costa Rica,'' abbreviated UCR) is a public university in the Republic of Costa Rica, in Central America. Its main campus, Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, is located in San Pedro Mo ...

with courses related to cultural marketing and strategy. UCR is the only university in Latin America that has a bachelor's degree in cultural management. At UCR she is also a researcher on

genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

and Chinese migration in Costa Rica.

Distinctive work themes

Transfeminisms and LGBTIQ+

In the different projects managed by Iris,

is one of the recurring themes. Through them, from independent initiatives and mainly with the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica, she has contributed and collaborated to achieve a greater visualization of initiatives by different artists, researchers and institutions that focus on feminist issues. The interview dossier published in the Cuban-American art and culture magazine ''Hypermedia Magazine'' stands out, in which nine outstanding curators and artists from Latin America are interviewed and linked, promoting her work and creating interdisciplinary relationships. Asimismo, es socia de Mujeres Mirando Mujeres, donde artículos de abordaje de proyectos feministas fueron publicados en su edición 2021, 2022 y 2023 In the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica it is worth mentioning the management and production of the Circuit of Feminist Artistic Practices, an initiative of the Museum of Women and Casa Ma of Costa Rica and LL Proyectos of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

, with which it seeks to make visible the work of women artists, promote the insertion of women in the management of cultural spaces and activities and create inter-institutional alliances around

feminist movement The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for Radical politics, radical and Liberalism, liberal reforms on women's issues created by inequality between men and wom ...

s. In addition to this circuit, her work in artistic residencies and training programs is also feminist through the incorporation of these themes as a central axis. In relation to this, also at the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica, she is usually in charge of LGBTIQ+ themed content. In 2021 she was the producer of the

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

Quiero Queer in collaboration with the Museum of Identity and Pride, in which 16 artists from the LGBTIQ+ community of Costa Rica were interviewed to address their intentions and background of their work as well as in a second season in 2022 with people over 50 to explore the socio-affective experiences of their youth. Also in 2019 she co-produced the artistic residency Drrag from Yesterday and the Future together with the Cultural Center of Spain in Nicaragua and Operación Queer, the first Central American artistic residency that explored the drag culture as

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

political and gender.

Diversity, sinology and anti-racism

Iris is the curator and producer of the artistic project Humani Suit, declared of Costa Rican national cultural interest and internationally awarded, which has represented Costa Rica in several international calls and in which a little more than 30 artists have been involved, extended to various creative disciplines. This project is a curatorial proposal with the artist Man Yu, around the concept of the layers of existence of the being represented through the skin, which advocates the recognition of the human being beyond physical differences. As part of the approach to diversity in favor of human rights, Iris has also been researching

sinology Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization p ...

since 2012. Her project "Genealogical Cartographies of Chinese Migration in Costa Rica: A Reidentification of Costa Rican Ethnicity" investigates the interconnections among Chinese families in Costa Rica to promote the elimination of

xenophobia Xenophobia (from (), 'strange, foreign, or alien', and (), 'fear') is the fear or dislike of anything that is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-gr ...

against the Chinese-descendant community, through the deepening of Costa Rican ethnicity due to its

genealogical Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

links with the Chinese migration in Costa Rica that dates back more than 165 years.

Art and strategy

In addition to her executive dedication to cultural management, Iris has researched various topics related to art and market strategy, dedicating her master's thesis "How is rice and how to cook in the Costa Rican pictorial art market?" to analyze the dynamics that generate the existing gap between the art academy and the art market, in the Costa Rican context. This thesis was supervised by the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design. Around these topics, Iris has been a lecturer and facilitator of training programs for artists in different public and private entities, such as the

, the Veritas University, the Artists House, the Committee for the Improvement of the Costa Rican Association of Visual Artists and the

Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 ...

n Institute of Culture in

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

and is the director of Global Metro Art, a cultural company dedicated to strategic cultural management.

Career and outstanding projects

Distinctive work themes

Transfeminisms and LGBTIQ+

Diversity, sinology and anti-racism

Art and strategy

References

External links